In a world where cities are becoming more important than countries, Rotterdam, Liverpool, Marseilles and Naples could form a 'cities gang'. All four are working class, multicultural and internationally oriented, and have been influenced significantly by urban planning and nineteenth-century and modernist urges to demolish. They share a clichéd sense of inferiority and often top 'the wrong charts'. They are currently undergoing an international re-evaluation, including ongoing processes of gentrification. Their shared characteristics could form the basis for a gang of cities capable of taking on the world. Or even showing the world how it could be done.